Seeking Diverse Fire Dept., City Relaxes Requirements

By DIANE CARDWELL

Published: August 8, 2006

Expanding efforts to attract women and minorities to the Fire Department, the city is relaxing its standards for applicants to take the entrance exam by reducing academic requirements and allowing job experience to substitute for college course work, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday.

Still, for those who pass the test, the probationary period will be longer and more rigorous, giving the department more time to train and evaluate applicants, the mayor said.

''By recognizing the value of professional experience, we'll create opportunities for more New Yorkers and ultimately strengthen the department by hiring candidates with a wide range of skills and life experiences,'' Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference in Brownsville, Brooklyn, announcing the changes, which were reported yesterday in The Daily News.

''If you have more people taking the test, there will be more diversity because you just have a bigger group to choose from.''

For decades, the city has faced pressure to diversify the Fire Department, which remains overwhelmingly white and male, in sharp contrast to other agencies and to the population of the city. According to the department, at the end of July there were 11,605 firefighters. Of those, 620 were Hispanic, 336 black, 69 Asian-American and 6 Native American, for a total of 8.9 percent. All told, 30 were women.

In recent years, the department's record has spurred a federal complaint by the Vulcan Society, an association of black city firefighters, and a Justice Department investigation into the department's hiring practices that began last year and is still under way. However, city officials said, some of their efforts to diversify the agency have begun to bear fruit. They noted that in the last class to graduate from the Fire Academy, in July, 21 percent were minorities.

Last year, with an extra $3.2 million, the department expanded its recruitment and diversity unit, and in May it began an advertising campaign to highlight aspects of the job other than fighting fires. That came in response to a Columbia University study that found that people were more interested in applying after learning about the salaries, benefits and flexible schedules being offered to firefighters.

Now, by relaxing the requirements for the entrance exam, the city hopes to broaden the applicant pool and increase minority and female representation. Officials also said they would lengthen and intensify the training period for new recruits, which is now 13 weeks long, but added that they were still working on the details.

Under the new qualifications for the entrance exam, which is given every four years, applicants need to have a high school diploma, or the equivalent, and either 15 college credits, reduced from 30 credits, or six months of full-time satisfactory work experience. Military service with an honorable discharge can also qualify an applicant for the exam, which is next scheduled for January.

During the period in which applicants can sign up for the exam, which began yesterday and continues through Oct. 13, the city will be running a new advertising campaign and will provide free tutorials and coaching for both the written and physical tests.

Calling the efforts the most aggressive diversity program in the department's history, Fire Commissioner Nicholas A. Scoppetta said, ''Simply stated, it's the department's goal to have a work force that mirrors the citizens that we serve.''

But Fire Capt. Paul Washington, president of the Vulcan Society, said that more needed to be done to reduce the hiring gap once the test results were in. The written and physical components each count for half of an applicant's score, which can be increased by a variety of factors, including living in the city or having a relative who was killed while on duty for the department. The final scores are used to create a list from which new firefighters are chosen, in order, over the next few years. Captain Washington said that black applicants often tended to end up at the bottom.

''If they have a very successful recruitment effort, and there's a good chance that this recruitment effort will be successful,'' he said, ''it means nothing if blacks don't end up getting hired.''